In 1957 Christianity Today editor Dr. J. Marcellus Kik sent R. J. Rushdoony, then known primarily as a promising young critic of modernism and secular education, a letter announcing the launch of a new venture. At the time, Rushdoony had not yet abandoned the mainline Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for J. Gresham Machen’s separatist Orthodox Presbyterian Church. If Rushdoony had done so, Kik would likely have never reached out to him because, as [Carl] Henry later recalled of his editorial strategy, "We solicited articles from evangelicals in mainline denominations, not because we were precommihted to ecumenism but because writers in the independent church might give the magazine an anti-ecumenical cast that would hinder our outreach."